Title: The Beast In The Dugout 3/3Author: apostrophee @ maddys_slashWord Count:10,626Pairings: Derek/Stiles, non-con Peter/Stiles, non-con Peter/DerekSummary: AU. Derek knows that look in his uncle’s eyes. It’s the same needy look uncle Peter used to give Derek before he got too big to play with. Now Uncle Peter is looking at the new kid whose uniform doesn’t quite sit right on his body. All Stiles wanted to do was play baseball, but there is something really weird about Coach Pete.Rating/Warnings: R, Non-graphic sexual abuse of a child (not glorified in any way, shape or form), coercion, mating, underage

It’s the sound of his window being pushed open that wakes him. The cool breeze of the night air, the faint smell of autumn and Derek perfumes the room. Stiles opens his eyes and breathes it all in as he watches Derek climb gracelessly into his bedroom, stumbling hand over foot as if Derek’s not aware of the desk that’s in front of the window. As if Derek hasn’t been climbing through Stiles’ bedroom window every night for a little over a week now, when it’s late and the world has gone calm.

His eyes study Derek’s movements, observing every detail in the darkness that he can make out. The stretch of old cracked leather as Derek drags his jacket off of his shoulders. The inelegant kick of his mud-caked boots as he slips out of them, kicking them under Stiles’ bed. The rustle of denim as Derek steps out of his jeans and throws his t-shirt over his head, stripping down almost bare.

All the while Stiles just stares at him, watching the shadows of the night wash over pale skin. He pulls back the covers, a silent invitation for Derek to hurry up because it’s cold and Stiles can’t be bothered with going down the hall to adjust the thermostat. He doesn’t want to risk waking up his dad.

“Hey,” Derek whispers as he climbs in. “You okay?” He asks and Stiles laughs to himself. He’s any and everything except okay and Derek knows this. Sometimes it’s astounding just how awkward Derek really is. Hilarious even, in a sad kind of way because Derek has spent the last eight years of his life doing god knows what and with whom. Those things aren’t clear, but what is clear is that something inside of Derek hasn’t developed properly.

He lacks social grace, can’t quite pick up on communal cues and clues. He doesn’t understand how to read body language, how to stop pushing when he’s going too far. Whatever life Derek’s lived before he came back home hasn’t healed him. He won’t tell Stiles anything about his life, this other life he’s had to live away from Beacon Hills staying with just people, as Derek calls them. Not his family. Derek has no family, not really. Does he even have friends?

What he does know is the anger Derek has inside of him for this is the same anger that Stiles has. He knows the hurt and fear inside of Derek for these emotions too settle in the pit of Stiles’ gut with every waking breath and restless night. Day in and day out there’s been this heavy weight on Stiles' shoulders making him feel much older than his sixteen years should make him feel. And this pisses him off, royally. He wants control of his life. He thought he had it, but he’s beginning to realize that he’s never had it. Coach Pete took that away from him.

Stiles craves the feeling of freedom, the ache like a missing limb that still remembers what it was like to move.

“Yeah…just peachy,” he says sarcastically, but he’s settling under the covers, burrowing down into the warmth making sure not to get too close to Derek.

Stiles wants to touch him though. He wants to wrap his arms around Derek, bury his face against Derek’s skin and stay there, just stay, but he knows he can’t. They have these silent rules, these lines that they can’t cross, that Derek refuses to acknowledge even exist. In his mind, silence is better than having to come up with an answer.

But Stiles just wants things to get better. He wants to be better.

Maybe, one day, someday, things will be better.

Maybe once they kill Peter everything will be okay.

Past

The Hale House fire killed fifteen people: six adults and nine children. Stiles had met them all. He’d had conversations with each and every one of them, shared stories over dinner with these people. And just like that, in one night, they were all gone, everyone except for Derek and Peter.

Derek had told Stiles that he’d killed Coach Pete, but he was wrong. The paper said there was an electrical fire, some old wires had crossed and just one spark turned into an inferno. Like a cockroach Peter Hale crawled out of the flames, his face and eighty percent of his body melted like tar on a driveway, the skin flaking off in blackened peels with only the aid of a machine to keep him breathing. At least that’s what the stolen police report had said.

Stiles makes a copy of that report. It’s almost fifty pages long and most of the terminology used are words he has to search on his computer because he doesn’t understand what epidermal and debridement mean.

What Peter went through was horrific. The pain he must have felt; the pain all of the Hales had to have felt burning alive. It was too much for Stiles to take and he threw up all over the report. Dry heaving until nothing could come out.

God help him because he was happy. He was glad that Peter suffered. He felt a joy rise up inside of him at the very thought of Coach Pete in pain. And Stiles felt guilty for this. He was ashamed by his delight, but he ignored that part of him that told him he should feel sympathy for this man. Monsters don’t deserve sympathy.

Present

Stiles parks his jeep in the back lot of Beacon Hills General hospital. This is a small town hospital and generally the main parking lot, which has much easier access to the front of the building, is always empty. Today it’s not though. Today there are news vans parked in just about every vacant spot.

Miracle: Burn Victim Wakes Up From A Ten Year Coma And Asks For A Steak

The newspapers keep getting it wrong. Peter was only in a coma for eight years. Seven years, nine months to be exact. Fucking idiots.

Derek and Stiles slip past the front desk without any trouble. The nurses all know Stiles and just assume he’s visiting Melissa McCall, no doubt on another quest to convince her to allow Scott to accompany him doing lord knows what, getting into the kind of harmless trouble teenage boys seem to always find. They do take note of the older boy who trails behind him; eyes stuck forward, midnight hair artfully tousled. But he’s with Sheriff Stilinski’s boy and everyone knows that Stiles is about as harmful as a ladybug.

The burn unit is on the third floor. With ease they take the stairs. Stiles’ heart is beating in his chest. He’s sure Derek can hear it, the thump-thump-thump, the racing of his pulse, the way he’s breathing as if it’s a chore to do so. Stiles is terrified of what they’re about to do, but he knows he has to –needs, to do this. Coach Pete can’t live. He’s a monster and Stiles and Derek are the good guys. And at the end of every story it’s always the good guys’ job to kill the monster.

This is just how these stories are supposed to end.

“Stiles,” Derek says and his voice comes out choked. He places his hand on Stiles’ waist and stops him from opening the door, the door that leads to the hallway where Peter’s room is.

“I’m okay.” Stiles lies, his heart skipping a beat.

“You don’t have to be here. I told you, it’s what I have to do. You don’t have to be a part of this.”

“I am though,” Stiles says. He steps away from Derek, leaning his back against the wall. “You know what he did to us. I need to watch him die. I need to know he’s gone.”

Derek takes a step forward and for a moment, just for a moment he lets his guard down. He’s crowding Stiles up against the wall, chest to chest, back to white painted brick. He has his hands against Stiles’ shirt, palming at the fabric, grasping as if Stiles is his anchor to the world. He’s kissing him and Stiles is open and ready and he’s kissing back, but he keeps his arms at his sides as if he’s afraid that if he touches Derek, pulls him close like he longs to, Derek will shutdown, because that’s what broken things do: they stay broken if no one fixes them, kicked puppies flinching from gentle hands.

And Stiles is in no condition to fix anything, but god damn it he will try. So he reaches up, pulls Derek close, body flushed and kisses him like the world is ending.

Past

When Stiles is thirteen he tries to tell his father what Coach Pete did to him, but he can’t find the words over dinner. As his father asks him about his day, because eighth grade is so fucking interesting, Stiles can’t pull the words from his throat. He doesn’t know why on this cold January evening he wants to tell his dad, but he does, so he tries.

“I saw this movie the other day,” he starts. His father nods for him to continue. “It was pretty good.”

And this is not the response that Stiles was expecting. He’s actually not sure what he’s expecting, but it most definitely was not that.

“Well…” he pauses, pushes his roast beef around on his plate. He’s not hungry anymore. “There was nothing else on….”

And that’s the end of that.

Present

The first thing Stiles thinks when he sees Peter is that he’s a lot smaller than he remembers him being, with a slighter build. Coach Pete used to seem so huge, like this behemoth of a man, like this beast, but lying in this hospital bed, face half melted away, hair thinned to sparse dark brown tufts on the side of his face, he looks so fragile.

“Hello nephew,” Peter says not bothering to take his eyes off of the television. Stiles hangs back near the door as Derek enters the room. He can feel the rage Derek is feeling, his body hot with anger, and the nervous twist of anticipation making something in his chest throb.

“You know why we’re here.” Derek says and Peter smiles.

“I suppose you’re here to finish what you started?”

Derek growls and makes a move toward the bed, but Peter raises his arm as if he’s about to strike and Derek pauses mid-step.

“Think about what you’re about to do here nephew. There are cameras everywhere.” He points above his head where a security camera is pointed toward them. “How would it look: you killing your dear, sweet beloved uncle? Didn’t you hear: I’m a living, breathing phenomenon? Beacon Hills very own miracle!”

Stiles glares at Peter. He thought he would feel…something different. The anger is here, but the fear, the fear he’s held inside for so long, it’s just not here. Gone. He’s not afraid of a man who’s as bent and hollowed out as the charred remains of the Hale mansion.

“Derek, let’s go.” Stiles states.

“Stiles…my we’ve grown up, haven’t we? It’s a shame. I liked it better when you were small. You had very… delicate places. All soft, squishy parts.” And there is joy on Peter’s face when he says this, a depraved ecstasy.

And he can feel it, that rage, that water boiling over the pot, and he’s lunging at Peter. He’s trying to get at him, trying to claw at him, but Derek is holding him back. It’s easy, Derek is strong, but Stiles is pumped full of adrenaline fueled rage. He feels like a rabid animal foaming at the mouth.

Stiles kicks and punches at Derek, digs his nails into Derek’s arms, elbows him until he’s free and he’s on Peter, he’s on him and he’s swinging, but Peter only laughs.

He laughs as Stiles’ fist connects with his jaw, like it doesn’t hurt. Peter is a wolf; this probably doesn’t hurt, but Stiles throws punches, left-right-left until his hands are sore. Until Derek is pulling him away from the bed, until he’s pulling him out of the room, Peter’s cackle haunting them as Derek drags him down the hall and into the safety of the outside world.

Sunlight touches Stiles skin and he feels human again.

Later that night, in Stiles’ bedroom, when it’s dark and quiet again, when the cool October breeze blows through the open window, Derek, once again, slips underneath Stiles’ skin. He touches him this time, reaches out a hand and laces his fingers through Stiles’. He looks at Stiles as if he’s the be all and end all and Stiles…Stiles is kind of stupid for Derek. He moves in close, as close as he can, laying chest to chest, slipping his leg between Derek’s and before he knows it, he’s asleep.

He feels like there’s something important between them, something worth building.

In the morning Stiles decides to do it. He leaves Derek in his room with strict instructions to keep the fuck quiet and he goes to his father’s bedroom. It’s just before dawn and it’s a Saturday and Sheriff Stilinski knows something is wrong for he knows his son, and for Stiles to be up before ten on a Saturday, something terrible must have happened.

“What’s wrong?” He asks, abruptly sitting up. Stiles edges his way toward his father’s bed, sits beside him. He looks anywhere, but at his dad, afraid that if he looks into his eyes, he’s going to do something awful like cry or run away. Instead he bites at his thumb, chewing at the tip of his nail.

“I need to…I need to tell you something.”

“What? Stiles you’re really making me worry here, kid. What’s wrong?” His father looks so much older, older than Stiles remembered him looking the day before. Where the hair was once rich and auburn, it’s now dull and grayed. The lines around his eyes make him look sad and god damn it Stiles knows his about to break his father’s heart.

“I don’t know how to say this. I just…I don’t want you to be mad at me, okay?”

In this room Sheriff Stilinski is just dad. He pulls his son close to him. “There’s nothing you can do to me to make me mad at you. Okay, yeah…you can piss me off,” he smiles and looks a little bit younger. “But whatever it is son, you’ll be okay. We will be okay, I promise. Tell me what’s going on?”

Stiles nods his head, but still doesn’t look at his father. He focuses on a spot on the wall, a hole where a picture used to hang, a picture of blue flowers standing in a vase that Stiles broke when he was fifteen and stumbling around his dad’s room, looking for a bottle of whiskey to steal.

“When…when I was eight. Something really bad happened. Coach…Coach Pete…he…um….he did something…something not good. I wanted to,” he pauses. Takes a breath. “ I wanted to tell you then, but I was scared to. I’m not scared anymore.”

And right there Stiles breaks. He falls against his father and he’s quiet. He can feel his father’s arms pull him in tighter into a nervous hug and he’s asking question after question, so many questions that Stiles doesn’t want to answer, that Stiles can’t answer because he’s trying to breathe, god damn it he’s trying to breathe and the more he speaks, the easier it becomes.

Future

In the end the good guys don’t have to kill the monster. It only takes one to tell and soon, others too tell their stories of the monster that lived in their closets. When it’s all said and done, the file is too many pages to count and there’s dozens of boys, dozens of boys who Coach Pete clawed at. When confronted, all Coach Pete does is smile from his hospital bed and says:

When the wolf wants to come out I let him play. I can’t help it. He get’s hungry.

Future, Soon

Every now and again Stiles still has trouble sleeping. It’s mostly when it’s dark and the rest of the world is at rest. And sometimes, when it gets too hard, when the memories still come in, there’s Derek, climbing through the window, shucking off that old, cracked black leather mess he calls a jacket. And he’s there, filling up all of the empty spaces, pulling Stiles close to his body, whispering things, kissing promises into skin.

Oh my god, this is beautiful and sad and angering and my heart is breaking for Stiles and Derek. For what they had to endure. I am happy they found each other again and that they are there for each other to fill up the empty spaces that Peter created.